


Shadow play

by historymiss



Category: Gideon the Ninth - Tamsyn Muir
Genre: 1920s AU, AU, Gen, Gideon is a bootlegger, Harrow is a medium, Ortus is a cat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-03
Updated: 2020-01-03
Packaged: 2021-02-27 07:13:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,354
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22103134
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/historymiss/pseuds/historymiss
Summary: 1920s au. Harrow is the most hardcore spirit medium in town.
Relationships: harrowhark nonagesimus/gideon nav
Comments: 4
Kudos: 66





	Shadow play

Harrow pads across the floorboards of the parlour, oak planks that have turned almost black with age. Gideon remembers this floor well. Sweeping it had been one of her duties, way back when. 

Back then, she had been watched by a thousand dusty knicknacks and creepy portraits- souvenirs from Priamhark’s Grand Tour and severe oil paintings of Pelleamena’s parents, their eyes seeming to judge her as she struggled with the too-large broom.

They’re all gone, now. The room stands empty save for the circular dining table that must have taken Harrow an age to drag into place by herself, and five mismatched chairs from various locations around the house. There’s no tablecloth, no crystal ball, not even a fire in the vast marble fireplace that’s carved with the Nonisvarius coat of arms. 

Or it used to be. Gideon draws closer and squints, running a finger over the huge crack that’s appeared straight across the skull-and-crossed-keys that Harrow’s family claimed as their symbol.

“The fire did this?” She asks, half-turning to see Harrow laying out her tools on the table. The other girl doesn’t look up.

“It happened when they died.” Harrow’s voice is taut with concentration. She’s chalking symbols on the once-polished wood, little circles that she fills with salt, topped with a fat drop of blood. Gideon frowns. She’s been to the Third’s wild, unholy parties, and Dulcinea’s sedate gatherings, and she’s never seen anything like this. 

Harrow lights a single candle, just the cheap white kind that you can find at any hardware store, and passes the match under the base a few times to melt the wax so it sticks to the wood when she plants it firmly in the middle of the table.

Sitting down, she closes her eyes, her lashes long and sooty in the kohl that circles the sockets.

“Send them in.”

Gideon puppets an imaginary Harrow to herself with her hand, screwing her face up as ferretty as it’ll go, but she crosses to the door, too, and admits a couple of kids that barely look old enough to be out after dark, let alone at a seance.

“Jeannemary Chatur?” Harrow regards the girl one coolly, extends a hand like a queen. “Take a seat, please.”

She glances at the boy, who shrugs. They sit, mechanically, as one. Gideon takes the empty chair.

“We want-“ Jeannemary begins, with the kind of bluntness that comes from being very, very nervous, but Harrow silences her with a tiny shake of her head. 

“I don’t need the details. I just need your hands.” 

Slowly, the kids link hands, the boy-Isaac, Jeannemary calls him, quietly, when she twines her fingers into his- taking Harrow’s hand in his. Gideon keeps hers in her lap until Harrow clears her throat.

“Nav.”

She reaches over to take Jeannemary’s hand, conveniently turning to ignore Harrow.

“ _Nav._ ” 

Harrow’s hand, heavy with bone bracelets and silver rings, looks like some bejewelled saint’s relic. Her fingers are pockmarked with scars from bloodletting, and her nails are chewed down to the quick. 

Gideon has never wanted to touch something less in her life.

Jeannemary’s grip tightens, just a little, fingers pressing into her skin. Isaac whispers something to her- comfort, by the cadence, and Gideon closes her eyes and exhales before she snatches Harrow’s hand in her own.

Harrow’s hold is extremely, almost uncomfortably tight, her skin not cold, as Gideon expected, but feverishly warm. Almost every aspect of her touch is profoundly unpleasant, and yet, actually holding hands with Harrow seems to diminish the power and terror she holds for Gideon. The shadows under her eyes just make her look tired, not mysterious. The black of her clothes is more of a shabby grey. There’s an eyelash on her cheek. 

Gideon has to fight a powerful urge to brush it away.

This illusion of normalcy is quickly dissipated, however, when Harrow closes her eyes and seems to exhale every bit of breath in her body. The candle flickers, almost extinguished, but then flared up straight and bright like a knife of light in the darkness.

Slowly, the warmth leeches from Harrow’s hand.

“I can sense them.” Her voice is a threat whisper that they all strain visibly to hear. “They cluster about you like carrion. Your families wait for you, Jeannemary. Isaac.”

Jeannemary takes a short, sharp breath, shock or hurt, Gideon isn’t quite sure. Isaac simply sits, still as a statue, the knuckles on his hand going white.

“Do they have a message?” Jeannemary rasps, eventually, after what seems like an age.

Harrow’s head lolls forward in a rattle of jewellery. When she looks up again, her eyes are black from corner to corner, her jaw hanging slack like a corpse’s. 

Gideon swears, very softly, under her breath. 

“Jeanne...” Harrow’s voice doesn’t come from her mouth. It’s barely her voice at all, hollow, wrung out, as if her tongue has dried in her mouth, and thick with an accent Gideon places as French. The candle wavers again, then burns a bright and brilliant white.

“Maman?” Jeannemary blinks, rapidly, then lets off a string of French too rapid for Gideon to follow. Harrow replies in kind, and her response makes Jeannemary’s eyes glisten in the candlelight. Isaac speaks next, eagerly, almost tripping over his words, and Harrow shudders as another spirit forces its way into her body. Gideon watches a slow trickle of blood snake its way down from her nose. 

Jeannemary and Isaac hardly notice. They’re too busy talking, unaware of how the shadows deepen around them and the candle’s flame begins to turn an icy blue.

They only draw back when blood starts to leak from the corners of Harrow’s eyes, black as ink.

“Harrow...” Gideon tightens her hold on the medium’s hand, but it remains an impassive, frozen claw. “Harrow, cut the spooky shit, okay?”

Harrow turns to her, snarls in French. Gideon bites the inside of her cheek hard enough to taste blood. 

“Harrow, that’s enough.”

Narrow shoulders shake and Harrow trembles, her head lolling forward as thick tendrils of white begin to extend from her mouth. Jeannemary and Isaac push their chairs back, but they can’t seem to let go of each other’s hands, or Gideon’s. Or Harrow’s.

Joined together and dragged to their feet, they watch in horror as Harrow’s body judders and spills forth ectoplasm, jerking and moaning inhumanly. The substance seems to float in the air around them, pulling itself this way and that as if in response to an unseen breeze.

Sometimes it forms faces.

Sometimes it’s worse.

On the table, the candle gutters, and Harrow arches her back to empty her guts in one last wretched heave. 

“ _Harrowhark_.” Gideon grits her teeth and pulls the slight form of her medium towards her, dragging her bodily across the floor. As she does so, she brings her other arm around, breaking the circle to wrap Harrow’s shaking body in her arms.

“It’s okay. Let them go.” She buries her nose into a tangle of soft black hair that smells, impossibly, of violets. “Shut the door. You can do it.”

The hand she’s still holding flexes, the fingers bending in unnatural shapes, and Harrow screams.

The candle goes out.

In the total dark that follows, Gideon feels the warmth bloom under Harrow’s skin, and has to stop herself from weeping with relief.

“Is it over?” Jeannemary’s voice is hushed, broken. Gideon glances at the slight shadow that she knows is Harrow.

The shadow nods.

“Yeah.” Gideon chances, realising, with less than the expected a lot t of joy, that the scream has left Harrow unable to speak. “You can head out. Sorry about uh, all that stuff.”

“Are you joking?” Isaac is being hustled out of the door, but the excitement on his face is clear as yellow light from the hallway floods in. “She gave us our families, if only for a moment. There’s nothing to apologise for.”

Gideon watches them leave, numbly, Ortus waddling his way in to sniff around the room suspiciously and butt his feline head into Harrow’s skirts.

She still hasn’t let go of Harrow’s hand.


End file.
